Tell No One

There have been a couple of French “thrillers” out in the theaters, all got good reviews, all moderately enticing. So, when the opportunity arose to catch Tell No One at the Stonestown Twin cinema, which is conveniently close to my house, I thought I would go ahead and go for it.

Adapted from an American crime novel by Harlan Coban with which I was unfamiliar, this is more of one of those crime novels that is a little bit Hitchcockian. A man’s wife is murdered, and though he isn’t found to be guilty of the crime, he is still under suspicion, even years and years later. And when a couple more bodies are recovered near the scene of that crime, the police start looking at him harder and harder.

Actually, it’s quite convoluted. There were points when I was having a hard time keeping up with all the characters. Who’s doing what? Her? Him? Huh? Okay, it’s not that bad, but it’s a complicated story, one that unravels quite slowly at first and then speeds up to the point at the end, when the story becomes elucidated in one of those genre quirks, the killer sits the protagonist down and spells out the whole story for him and the audience. Does that ever happen in real life?

It’s a decent thriller, but not amazing. However, I can easily see this being re-made in the U.S. with someone like Nicolas Cage (if you can imagine him as a pediatrician) or maybe with Matt Damon or something. You read it here first!

I probably should have seen the other one that is out there, Roman de gare (2007), which I think has gotten better press. It’s playing at the Opera Plaza, so who knows?